Clay Horses
by Sisyphean Effort
Summary: Ed's journey-it begins and ends in the shadow of one person, one figure: Trisha.  Written for FMA Day, Oct. 3rd.  2nd person POV.  Angst.  One-shot.


_This piece was written in celebration of FMA day, Oct. 3rd. I was going to wait and post it next weekend, but tomorrow's my birthday, so I decided to just go for it._

_Disclaimer: I do not own Fullmetal Alchemist._

_Summary: Ed's journey from beginning to end, condensed into 5 short, easy pieces. 2nd person POV (more of my rather lame literary experiments, I'm afraid)._

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><p>Clay Horses<p>

1.

Innocence

_"Mother is the name for God in the lips and hearts of little children."- William Thackeray_

Sunlight and birdsong. Swaying tree limbs, with the leaves just beginning to turn. A herald of Summer's death and Autumn's silent approach. A breeze drifts through the yard; it tickles the sides of your face with strands of your own hair. There, on the ground, sketched in dirt, is a circle. Simple and crude, drawn with a child's intuitive sense of structure. The six point star inside it is perfect, without flaw. A prodigious grace. You touch the edges of the circle with your hands, and a light appears, electric blue and crackling with energy. The light sails upward like a waterfall in reverse, and a small clay horse appears on the ground where before there was nothing. You grin at the makeshift animal, and you and your brother cheer the outcome of your efforts, the fruit of your studies. You reach out to pluck the clay horse from the ground, and you run to show it to your mother. Because you know somehow that the clay horse will make her smile. Because these days, you have to work to make her smile, you have to work to dispel the ever-present sadness that tugs at the corners of her eyes, that flattens the lines of her mouth. All that you do, you do to please Mother. All that you do, you do in order to make her happy. To make her forget.

To forget that cold and distant figure known as Father. The one who is no longer with you...

As you run through the grass with your brother close at your heels, you try to convince yourself that the nagging dread you feel is caused solely by the absence of that essential, yet missing figure. That he alone is the cause of all of Mother's suffering. You ignore the other signs, the other warnings. The fact that Mother isn't eating, that her movements are listless and drawn. That she is losing her color, just like the leaves on the trees. Last night you dreamed she baked you a pie, but when she went to cut it, worms came bursting through, wriggling free from the crust. Underneath, the pie was rotted through with decay. Now, as in the dream, you choose not to look beneath the surface. You choose only to see the sunlight before you and the gently swaying branches of the trees. You see your brother running beside you, so joyous and full of life. You see your mother standing by the clothesline behind your house, and it is a beautiful, pastel-painted picture of comforting normalcy. You see the whole of your world, and it is perfect, unchanging.

But the color of the leaves is changing. The texture is changing. And Mother...she is changing.

You approach the clothesline and hold out your offering, a supplicant kneeling before his God. You are rewarded with a smile and with double-edged words of praise: "You're talented, Edward. Just like your father." You don't realize that this praise is poison. You don't realize that this one innocent moment will later inform other decisions, decisions with dire, long-reaching consequences. Right now you simply feel triumphant, because you were able to make Mother smile. You do not see how her hands shake as they grip the wooden pins, that she has to concentrate with all her being to get the clothes straight on the line. You choose not to see. You see only your own achievement and a future that is bright with endless possibility and wonder.

You do not realize, in your youthful naivete, that it is the brightest flames that always burn out the fastest.

2.

Arrogance

An overcast sky and a single tombstone. The wind whips mercilessly at the tree branches, sends shivers racing through the brush. The sky continues to change color, from robin's egg blue to hard stony gray. You kneel in the grass before your fallen God, and you refuse to accept it. You cannot accept it. That Mother is gone, taken far beyond the reaches of the living, through the Gate. Your brother cries silently beside you, his shoulders heaving with grief. Your despair at this moment is unquantifiable: it's not something that can be measured, not like the elements inside the human body. The elements that you have, by now, memorized: water, 35 litres, carbon, 20kg, ammonia, 4 litres, lime, 1.5kg, phosphorous, 800g, salt, 250g, sulfur, 80g, fluorine, 7.5g, iron, 5g, silicon, and 15 other trace elements. You repeat these measurements in your head like a litany, a prayer. You offer them to no God. You don't know of any God, except the one who used to stand smiling in an apron by the sink. You now know the truth, that all Gods are fallible. You do not think, in your disjointed logic, to apply this rule to yourself.

You know only that you must bring her back. That you _will _bring her back. Alchemists are the closest thing to Gods, and now you must play the role. You will go where angels fear to tread, where demons fear to linger. You are determined to push the envelope-push it and watch it bend. _ It must bend. _ Your grief, your rage is the impetus for folly, but you are determined to see it through. You have the ingredients, the formula, the knowledge. You can do it. You will see it done.

You do not see the spiral of fire that waits to suck you down into a blistering hell. You do not see the Truth that waits for you like a trap in the dark. You don't see it because, once again, you choose not to see...

3.

Penance

_Shadows on the wall, cast by cold metal suits of armor._

_ Symbols on the floor, chalked around carefully drawn lines of demarcation._

_ Blood dripping to the ground-your own-as your screams rend the air._

_ "He's my only brother! Give him back! He's all I have left! Give him back...I'll give you anything...just don't take him!"_

_ Metal sings on wood as you reach for a random suit of armor, as you pull at it and bring it crashing to the floor. You have to drag yourself to do this because your leg is gone, absorbed by the materials of the Gate. Your brother is also gone, taken as payment for that thing, that wretched creature you have created that is not really alive, not really your mother. Just bones and twisted limbs and grinning skeletal teeth. An abomination. Desperation drives you, compels you, and you know that somehow, some way, you must undo this, you must get your brother Alphonse back. With whatever it takes. With whatever you can offer. So you dip your fingers into your own blood, and you use it to etch a symbol onto the armor's metal helm, and with your heart in your throat and a sob on your lips, you seal it there with the bonds of your own soul..._

Sunlight and heat. A cloudless sky. Sand and dust beneath your fingertips, hard rock against your back. And the remnants of your memory-dream, disintegrating in the brightness. "Wake up, brother. It's time to go." Your brother's voice is a tinny echo, a ten-year-old's high sing-song trapped within the confines of a metal box: eternal, empty, unchanging. _And it is all because of you, because of what you did. You are the cause. _Every creak the armor makes is an accusation, a reminder. It is your penance, your albatross, your slinking, guilty conscience. It's the relentless sound of sin, a constant refrain of blasphemy singing in your ears. It drives you with the madness of the afflicted, pushes what little sanity you have to the brink. _Skree, skree, skree! _Your brother cannot sleep, but you can, and when you do, all you see are nightmares, visions of blood-soaked traumas. You cannot escape it. You cannot let it go. Even though you have burned your childhood home to ground, burned away the physical scene of your terrible crime, you cannot escape the past, cannot escape its long, grasping shadow. You carry it with you always, in the steel and wiring and gears of your right arm, in the false weight of your left leg. It travels beside you always, in the _squeaks! _and_ skrees!_ of empty, metal limbs. In a child's small, high unchanging voice.

It is with you always. Always.

_Give him back! He's my only brother! Give him back..._

You travel across deserts, over forgotten wastelands. To cities made of water and cities made of coal. Your search is endless; your heart is determined. _You will fix this! You will! _Like the suit of armor by your side, you cannot rest, cannot find peace, until your past folly is undone, until things are set to rights. Until your brother is real and whole again. You do not care about yourself. Only for the empty one, the lost one, standing beside you.

You will give anything to make it happen. You will walk over corpses and battlegrounds and minefields of mental agonies to make sure that it happens. And you know, deep down in your heart, what will be required of you. That you will have to give everything. Everything that you are. That the day will soon come when there will be a choice, and a sacrifice. You see the inevitable path before you, and this time you do not turn away. You choose, instead, to see.

And in seeing, you stoop to pick up your heavy cross, heave it across your shoulders, and go silently forward...

4.

Recompense

Violet eyes and an evil smile. A soulless laugh: deep, foul, sexless, inhuman. When the dagger plunges into you, it goes in so easy, like a butter knife cutting into a hot, fresh-baked pie. Your blood is as red as cherries as it spills across the floor, over the lines of the array. _Beautiful! All that rich red and the symbols underneath! It's beautiful! Beautiful! _ As the blood flows out of you, as your very life flows out of you, you finally feel triumphant. You finally feel cleansed. You finally feel free.

Your eyes close onto what you believe is the final sleep, and you know at last that you have your victory.

5.

Acceptance

Shadows on the ground. The wind sets the tree branches to dancing, their waving, sylph-like arms periodically blocking the sunlight from your view. Gold and black, gold and black. A kaleidoscope of light and dark. You sit quietly on a deckchair in your brother's backyard with an open book on your lap. You remember how much you used to love books, so very long ago. How you would read whole hours, whole days, away. But now that you're no longer young, the hours have gotten shorter, the days have dwindled to almost nothing. No one warned you that this would happen when you got older. No one told you that time would just magically speed up. But then, no one really tells you anything when you are young.

"Uncle Ed! Uncle Ed!"

Alphonse's eight-year-old son Edward is racing towards you, a beatific smile on his young, round face. He comes skidding to a halt in front of your chair, and you see that he has something in his hands: a clay horse. Still beaming, he kneels in supplication before you-his God, his idol-and he proudly holds the horse up for your inspection and he says: "Look uncle! I made it with alchemy! Just like you! Look, look!" His face is radiant with innocent triumph, his eyes shining with adoration. With such naked need for your particular words of praise. And you cannot deny your nephew anything, so you grant him the thing he wants.

"That's very good, Edward. The proportions are nearly perfect. You're going to be a very talented alchemist one day." You then reach out to take the clay horse from your nephew's hand, and that's when it happens. When you notice it. The sight of your own fingers shaking, quivering of their own accord. You cannot stop it. _You are like a branch waving in the wind. _You see it clearly, but your nephew does not. He sees only his own accomplishment; he hears only your words of praise. You see your own hands shaking before you, and you falter. You have to concentrate with all your being on simply lifting the clay horse, and you know then what is coming. _You know._ You know at this moment that your time is nearly done. You cannot deny it. You cannot turn your eyes from it. And in the silence of your soul, your heart remembers, and whispers a single, painful word:

Mother...

_End/Fin._

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